James McMurtry Finally Comes Back to Amarillo — Roughly 30 Years Late

The last time James McMurtry played Amarillo, George H.W. Bush was president, he was hauling around his second album with no label muscle behind it, and the venue was a since-vanished club called Shooter's. He remembers the graffiti better than the gig. "There was graffiti all over it," he told Brick & Elm's Chip Chandler ahead of this week's show, "and somebody had written on the wall, 'Ian Moore is misunderstood in Amarillo. Love, God.' And somebody wrote underneath that, 'Ian Moore misunderstands God. Love, Eric Clapton.' That was my Shooter's experience."

That was 1992 or '93. On Sunday, July 12, at 8 p.m., McMurtry corrects the three-decade oversight with a nearly sold-out show at the Golden Light Cantina, 2906 S.W. Sixth Ave. Limited tickets were still floating around at $25 plus fees at press time, and if you've been meaning to see one of Texas's great narrative songwriters in a room that holds a couple hundred people, this is not the one to sleep on.

The son of novelist Larry McMurtry, James built his own reputation the hard way — dense, novelistic songs like "Choctaw Bingo" and "We Can't Make It Here" delivered in a deadpan Texas drawl. He's out behind album #14, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, and he's bringing his full band, The Marshall Law Review, plus opener BettySoo. The record is a family affair: his late father inspired the title track, and his son, musician Curtis McMurtry, turns up on "Pinocchio in Vegas."

At 64, McMurtry has made peace with an industry that never quite made him a star. Asked whether an old quip still held — that the business had "adapted to me" because he already knew how to tour cheap — he didn't flinch: "It remains the same, pretty much. I mean, now you really got to tour cheap because gas is $5 a gallon in some places." Touring on the cheap, in his telling, means four guys in a van full of gear and merch, selling CDs and, to his chagrin, vinyl. "I kind of wish they left the vinyl in the ground with the dinosaur bones," he said, "but they didn't."

Why did a literary kid pick songs over sentences? "Because I don't read," he said, only half joking, before crediting a childhood Kris Kristofferson concert in Richmond, Virginia. "They just seemed to be having such a great time. I thought, that's what I want to do."

Here's why a single Golden Light booking is worth a full write-up: acts of McMurtry's stature don't route through Amarillo by accident. The city sits far from every major market, and getting a songwriter of this caliber into a 6th Avenue cantina — rather than losing him to Dallas or Austin — is exactly the kind of win that keeps a small scene on the touring map. That it's taken 30 years only makes the correction sweeter.

Get there early. BettySoo is worth your full attention, and the man himself has waited long enough. So, arguably, have you.

Sources: Can't Miss with Chip Chandler, July 7 (Brick & Elm); James McMurtry Live tickets (Eventbrite); James McMurtry at GoldenLight